Most federal agencies are at moderate- to high- risk of not properly archiving records, says the National Archives and Records Administration in an evaluation of agency records management self-assessments.

Archiving of electronic records is the most troubling issue, NARA adds in a report dated Feb. 22 but posted online March 2. The agency in May 2010 asked 270 agencies to fill out a records management survey; 93 percent of agencies (and all cabinet level departments) responded.

NARA then assigned scores to agency responses and came to the conclusion that 95 percent of the respondents scored below a 90, placing them at least at moderate risk of improper archiving. NARA considers agencies scoring below 60 to be at high risk--the departments of Agriculture, Education, Justice and Transportation are in that category.

Particularly when it comes to electronic records, the NARA report takes on a worried tone, stating that the self-assessment shows few agencies with a compliant electronic recordkeeping system--and that many of the agencies that do have some type of such system "are not able to use it to capture email messages because the recordkeeping system and the email systems are incompatible."

In fact, most agencies resort to telling employees to print out their emails for archiving purposes, which results in a state of affairs NARA calls "inadequate preservation."

Most agencies also operate under the misconception that backing up emails is the same as archiving them, the report adds.

Records management staff only sometimes get included in the planning and implementation stages of new information technology systems, the report says. Nineteen percent of agency respondents said that records staff "always" participate in the design, development and implementation of new systems,and an additional 16 percent said staff participate "most of them time."

Survey responses indicate that most agencies have a functioning records program--but, "a records scheduling program may be functioning at a minimal level without being effective overall," the report states.

Almost 10 percent of agencies have not submitted a record schedule--a policy regarding records retention and disposal--in more than a decade. Schedules that old are likely to be obsolete, since programs come and go and recordkeeping practices have changed in the interim. Such dated schedules are also unlikely to cover web records, and NARA has issued guidance telling agencies to consider whether their social media use requires a schedule.

The self-assessments leave no doubt that agency records officers "are struggling, with inadequate training, personnel, resources and support from their senior managers,"  the report concludes.

NARA did a similar survey last year, but the results aren't necessarily comparable thanks to a change in the survey methodology.

For more:
- download the NARA report on agency record management self-assessments (.pdf)

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